“Yes,” I said, softly. “You can touch it.”
The silver girl pushed her fingers into my scalp, exploring with her fingernails. “What’s that? Feels like a ridge.”
“That’s where my mama sewed in the weft. She’s a cosmetologist.”
I started overexplaining, tel ing her that this new process was technical y cal ed “hair integration,” but for short, people cal ed it a weave, and that my mother was one of only twenty hairdressers in the city who knew how to do it. I bragged that it was the next big thing. I jabbered on as her careful hands explored my whole head. Passersby, even the other silver girls, noticed and turned toward each other to talk about us. Old people gave a quick look and swept their eyes away the way they do when they catch people kissing on the MARTA train. It was excruciating, real y, imagining the feel of my synthetic hair to her real hands. It’s the way you feel when you go too far with a boy you don’t know so wel . It stops feeling good, but you’ve done too much to tel him to stop.
Final y, she pul ed her hands away. “Sorry,” she said.
I laughed to try and sound casual. “So what’s your name?”
She reached again for her add-a-beads.
“You shouldn’t do that. You’re going to break the chain.”
“I know,” she said. “I had to have it soldered twice already.”
“So what’s your name?” When she didn’t answer I spoke up.
“I’m Chaurisse.”
She nodded.
“My real name is Bunny — don’t ask — but I go by Chaurisse.” She didn’t laugh like most people did. Entire homerooms had broken into guffaws during rol cal , but this silver girl winced.
“I was named after my grandmother.” Grandma Bunny’s memory rushed at me, blinding me like a camera flash. My throat tightened and the beginning of a headache made a knot behind my eyes. “I miss her.”
Twisting her finger in her necklace, she said, “My name is Dana.”
“Dana,” I repeated.
“Dana.”
“Let me give you a card,” I said. “My mama has a beauty shop. Cal me and I’l do you a wash-and-set. On the house. Or maybe we could hang out again?” She took the card from me and zipped it into her handbag. I took out another card. “You can write your number on the back.” I rummaged around for a pen, but al I could come up with was a navy blue eyeliner. “I guess you have to write with this.”
She looked at the brand. “This is expensive.”
“It’s my mom’s, she won’t miss it. You want it?”
She turned the eye pencil over in her hands. “For real?”
“No,” I said. “For play-play.”
She looked confused and maybe even a little hurt.
“No,” I said. “You can have it.”
She put it in her purse and gave a firm little nod.
“But write your number down.”
“I can’t give my number out. We’re unlisted and my mom doesn’t like for people to cal the house.”
“Oh,” I said, not sure whether to believe her. I had only known two people who weren’t al owed to share their phone numbers. One was Maria Simpson; her deal was that her parents were very old. The other person was Angelique Fontnot, and it made sense because her father was a city councilman or something.
“I’l cal you,” she said. “I swear to God.”
“Okay.”
“I have to go,” said the silver girl. “I’ve been here too long already.”
“Don’t run off,” I said. “Wait with me until my ride comes. You ever rode in a limousine before?”
“No,” she said. “I can’t do that.”
Then, like Cinderel a, she was gone.
15
GIRLS ARE TOO MESSY
BEAUTY PARLORS, IN GENERAL, are confessional spaces. A place like the Pink Fox is even more intimate than your average salon because it’s a business that’s also part of our home. If a client needs to go to the toilet, she uses the same bathroom where I take my shower in the morning. If she has an emergency, she might lift a panty liner from underneath the sink. Not to mention that there are customers who have been coming to my mother since before I was born.
The Pink Fox, with its two pump chairs, shampoo bowl, and three hooded dryers represented a generation’s worth of progress from the days when my mama sat hol ering on the front steps rounding up customers for her own mama. “Miss Mattie is pressing hair today. Two dol ars!” By 1967, my mama was making decent money renting a chair at a salon on Ashby Street, and Witherspoon Sedans was turning a good profit. There was money enough for my parents to put a down payment on a house, and Uncle Raleigh figured it was time to try living on his own. The
